


Stopgap Measures

by junkshopdisco



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Crossdressing Kink, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:32:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkshopdisco/pseuds/junkshopdisco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life has it in for Louis. Why else would it let Harry catch him wearing ladies' underwear?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stopgap Measures

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt at the 1D kink meme: _You know how a lot of the fans throw bras and underwear at the boys? Well, Louis secretly keeps all the best lingerie for himself. And he wears them around the flat on their off days. One day one of the boys slips into the flat and walks in on a freshly showered Louis as he is slipping into one of his ensembles._

Life is a cunt. Every time it has a chance to kick you in the nads, it takes it. 

This isn’t news to Louis – he’s known since he was six, when life decided to ruin his starring moment in the nativity. He was supposed to leap up from the flock of cuddly sheep, point at the ceiling and shout, “Follow the star!” – but instead, life made him dislodge a lamb, leap to save it, and flail off the stage in a windmill of tea towel and bathrobe. The whole thing was lovingly captured on video by his mother – his own mother – who then submitted it to _You’ve Been Framed_ , where it won the audience vote, causing his classmates to shout, “Follow the staaaargh, Louis!” at him for five whole years. 

Life’s status as a giant troll was reiterated – loud and clear – at fifteen, when at a party attended by Aimee Hardcastle (who he wanted like a drowning man wants a lilo), he ran down the garden in the dark, and got clotheslined by an actual clothes line, landing winded on the lawn. The only time she noticed his existence was as she stepped over him – while he was still clutching his throat and gurgling for help – on her way to the shed, where she gave Danny Goddard what was (to hear him tell it, anyway) the best blowjob in the history of the universe, leaving Louis alone and broken, surrounded by pegs and little torn pieces of his own dignity.

So, life is a cunt. Not news. Of all the cuntish things life has ever done to him, though, letting Harry catch him wearing satin knickers when he’s never done it before is definitely the worst.

Here’s how it happened:

>   
>  1\. Liam is a ninja fucker. Not in that he fucks like a ninja – how would Louis know? – in that he’s a fucker, but he’s ninja about it. For a while, underwear girls hurl at them has been making its way into their pockets and under the furnishings, and, on one quite memorable occasion, a bunch of what can only be described as virginally white pants fell from the top of Louis's bedroom door, showering him like some sort of biblical plague (whatever the others say, he did not almost wet himself because he’s always been a little bit afraid of seagulls and thought a gang of them had been lying in wait and attacked). Anyway, there were pants/knickers/panties/thongs/whatever aplenty about. Nothing to do with Louis. Nu-huh. Liam is getting the blame for that.
> 
> 2\. What he will take responsibility for is not being the biggest fan of washing his clothes. He has – in a pinch – been known to spray them with Febreze to extend their life by a week. Or two. So this morning, in a pinch, he got up and spritzed an outfit, left it to dry while he took a shower. Dripping wet, he found out there was nothing in his draws drawer except a tube of banana-flavoured lube he discovered in the least charming way possible he’s allergic to and a five pence piece that stopped being legal currency more than a decade ago. He couldn’t just put his jeans straight on because he’d Febrezed them – that stuff fucking stings when applied, still damp, to sensitive parts – and he couldn’t Febreze a pair of already used pants, because, well, same reason, and besides, that’s just wrong. 
> 
> 3\. Unlike some people, he doesn’t really enjoy prancing about the place with his tackle out. Logic dictated that when you’ve got a dearth of pants on the one hand and a plague of pants of an admittedly slightly flimsier and silkier sort on the other, you put on a pair of red satin knickers as a temporary stopgap. Anyone would have done the same.

Admittedly that’s not what Harry’s face is saying, caught as it is in blow-up doll open-mouthed surprise as he hovers in the doorway with his keys still in his hand, but Louis reasons that’s only because he doesn’t know the whole story. “There was a pant dearth.” Tremulous may well be the word for his voice.

Harry’s eyebrows squash together like, ‘who says dearth?’

“Liam’s secretly a pervert. He collects the scantiest undies when we’re not looking.” A quick glance in the mirror tells Louis two things: his neck is flushed to almost the same colour as the knickers, and they – the bastard, bastard things – are not really doing as much as he hoped to hide the tinge of hard-on he’s been brewing since he slipped them up his thighs and adjusted himself inside them. “Logic made me do it.”

Harry starts two or three sentences that never quite happen before waving vaguely at Louis’s chest. “That doesn’t really explain the bra.”

He’s right. It doesn’t. Blood too dispersed between his neck and his cock for his brain to come up with a sensible, cogent plan to get out of this, all Louis can do is drop a hand to his hip, and say, “Well they’re a matching set, aren’t they? You know how I feel about properly co-ordinated outfits.” 

Nodding in short little bursts of proto nod, Harry turns to close the door – slower than any human being has ever, ever turned, like a battery-operated toy about to freeze and keel over – and says, “You want some toast, then?”

_Not really. I want to crawl under the duvet and curl up and die a million excruciating deaths because this is Rasputin shame – burn it, stone it, roll it in a carpet and chuck it in the river, but this moment is just going to live and live and fucking live inside my head forever._

“Only if you cut it into triangles.”

~ * ~ 

What Louis expects is that Harry will tell the others, and in being forced into a box of _ha ha ha guess what Louis did this morning?_ it’ll become small, contained, and hilarious rather than sitting leaden and searing in his chest. Harry keeps shtummer than a shtum thing, though, keeps stealing little glances at him when he thinks Louis can’t see, and it has Louis’s fingers rubbing questions onto the nap of his jeans. He forgets where they’re going, even when they get there and the name of the radio station is written in four-foot high letters on the wall. He thinks he does a passable job of appearing to be human. You know, for someone wearing girl’s underwear under their kecks on national radio and trying not to break down and cry – proper snot bubble, dolphin noises cry – and babble apologies to his mother and the prime minister and most of all Harry all over the microphone.

They don’t get in until way after dark. Harry opens two beers and disappears behind his phone, leaving Louis to drink them both too fast and go a bit fizzy in the head because he hasn’t eaten anything but a couple of corners of toast. Reasoning that the day is unsalvageable, he toes off his shoes and pads towards his bedroom. 

Harry looks up from under his hair, eyebrows raised. “You going to bed already?”

“Just need to close my eyelids on this one, mate.”

Shuffling into his room, Louis hops out of his jeans, catching sight of the shock of red beneath his t-shirt in the mirror. He turns so his back is to it, shiny material clinging, highlighting the curve of his bottom and drawing his fingers like a magpie to a sweet wrapper. He twists to see himself from the side, and then the front, where tiny crimson bows bracket his cock. For things that have ruined his life, they feel pretty fucking nice and make his arse look quite spectacular. Sighing, he pulls his pyjama bottoms on over the top of them and belly flops onto the duvet, waiting for sleep to drown the whole sorry mess.

Of course it doesn’t come. At 3.14am, the gravel rolling across his eyeballs becomes too much to bear, and after ten minutes of quality ceiling staring he mutters, “Oh, fuck it,” and gets up. Sneaking into Harry’s room, a stray trainer takes his balance and he staggers into a stub of his toe. “Jes – ” And that’s when he realises Harry wasn’t snoring and the glint in the dark is his eyes, locked on the opposite wall. “Can I get in? I’ve got my pyjamas on.”

At the rustle of his hair in a nod against the pillow, Louis lifts the duvet just enough to hobble and slide under, fitting into a snuggle at the back of Harry’s head. Ferretting a hand under the covers to curl around Harry’s chest, he searches for the place he can feel his heartbeat.

Grumbling in a rather kittenish fashion, Harry shifts back against him, fitting his naked arse to Louis’s hip. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Things on my mind, you know?”

“Er – yeah. I – uh.”

Louis noses into his hair, breathing in wafts of marzipan shampoo and squeezing, mostly in the hope that Harry’s back will squash the scrambling pace of his pulse, every _th-thunk-th-thunk-th-thunk_ having in it the question, ‘fuck, what if I’ve fucked this?’ “Eloquent as ever, Haz.”

“Shut up. S’late.” Eyelids sliding closed, Harry searches for his hand and lines his fingers up, pushing them apart to make gaps for his. 

Louis clings – probably too hard – and an ice age passes in slow-mo, him breathing way too loud and far too fast and just watching it ruffle Harry’s hair like a breeze caressing a field.

Tentative and so fucking quiet it’s a good job Louis’s pressed right up into him, Harry whispers, “You’re usually asleep by now.” 

“Yeah.”

Harry gives it another moment, maybe expecting unconsciousness to just suddenly strike, before eying the ceiling. “Do you want me to say something about the – earlier?”

“It’d be the charitable thing to do for the sake of my blood pressure and the bags under my eyes.”

“Right.” 

At the turn of his head, Louis ducks out of his eye line and rests his lips against the softness of Harry’s neck, kiss he intended to cover his cowardice too cowardly to really form. 

“Well, I – ” Harry rolls over, lifting a thumb to touch under Louis’s jaw and tilt him up until there’s nothing to do but stare at the end of his nose. “ – was surprised, I guess.”

“Thanks, State The Obvious Boy.”

Harry kicks him in the ankle. “I’m trying to be sensitive.”

“I don’t want sensitive. I just want you to tell me I’m a weirdo and be done with it.”

“All right, weirdo,” Harry says, with overdramatic horror. “But – if it matters, I like my people how you like your toast.”

“Triangled?”

Harry sniggers against his chin and bats his shoulder in a half-hearted thump. “Anything but square.”

Anything but square. 

Anything _but_ square. Louis has done the impossible and dodged life’s kick to his satin-clad nads.

Smiling in that bastard crooked way that always gives Louis’s ribs a bad case of the jitters, Harry brushes his hair back. “Love you, still.”

“Good. While we’re sharing, I lied about the Liam thing. He’s not a pervert.” Louis glances at the ceiling, mostly because Harry’s look is cock-thickening and the satin’s pretty tight and the harder he gets the more it tightens and the more it tightens the more he likes it and that’s like some sort of erection vicious circle. “Or he might be, but he’s not a pant-stealing pervert. That was all me and my sidekick, curiosity. Except for the seagull thing – I don’t know who did that, so maybe me and Liam are both – ”

However many times Harry kisses him, it’s always a surprise. This one more so than all but the first, and not just because he’s not looking when it lands. He thinks it’s just going to be a peck to tell him to shut the fuck up and go to sleep now, but when he goes to move back, Harry’s lips chase and stay, and when he parts them to breathe, he pulls Louis in along with the air.

Right. Proper kiss, then. Obviously the way to deal with stuff of this magnitude is snogging.

Cupping the back of his neck, hair coddling his fingers, Louis tilts his head and fits them together, unable to keep the _unnnghh_ down when Harry’s tongue meets his. Harry has the world’s best mouth, of this, Louis is certain. Technically he probably hasn’t kissed anywhere near enough of them to call it a representative survey and decide, but nothing else could explain the way he feels when it’s against his, the way his insides pitch at Harry’s coaxing nips and licks – as if he needs to be coaxed. The handful of his synapses that spend every minute of every day cheerleading for this go ballistic when Harry does the opposite of pull away, nudging Louis’s knees apart to fit a leg between.

It only takes a moment before – as usual – they’re grinding against each other, Harry murmuring for more and sliding his hands under Louis’s waistband. Because all his blood is fleeing his brain for the place it’s really needed, Louis only realises what’s massively wrong with that picture at the exact second the kiss freeze-frames.

“You’re still wearing them?”

Harry really can open his eyes very wide. Unnaturally wide. Like he’s a subspecies.

“Shit, I’ll get rid of – ” Louis fumbles for the tie on his pyjamas, hindered by his tenting situation and the fact that his mind is about to tip into some kind of hyperpanic coma because it can’t remember if there’s a bigger word than ‘sorry’. Maybe he should invent one right now – it’s not like Harry’s going to run for his dictionary app in a moment like this to – 

Harry’s fingers close over his wrist. “Do you have any idea how fucking good you look in those?” Breathing in hot puffs, he presses a kiss to Louis’s mouth, mistaking its opening for invitation rather than surprise and slipping in his tongue in a way that makes it really, really difficult to think and process if this is really happening, or if he fell and hit his head at some point. That’s what this is – he’s in a real coma and this is some wild, drug-fuelled hallucination, because nothing else explains the greedy little mumbles vibrating against his lips. “All day, I’ve been – ” Groping between them for the knot, Harry tugs it undone, shoving the soft, worn cotton down so fast all the hairs on Louis’s legs stand to attention and his cock bounces up to his stomach, enjoying partial freedom as it pokes out of the waistband to say hello to Harry’s. “ – thinking about – ” Illustrating with a slide of his hands up over Louis’s bum, Harry murmurs and pulls him closer, nuzzling his neck. “ – your arse.”

“Nothing new there, then.”

A flare as Harry digs his teeth in – right on the muscle in a way that is probably supposed to be admonishing but feels like a reward – and his palms flatten and press before gathering the flesh beneath them into a squeeze. Louis wonders if it’s possible to get so turned on your body can’t handle it and you die. What would Harry say to his mother?

“Didn’t know how to say – ” Harry’s eyes flicker down. “ – to ask if you’d – do it again, but with me.”

Heart hammering against his ribs as if it’s about to go full _Alien_ , Louis steadies himself with a hand on Harry’s hip – which turns out not to be a steadying thing at all because Harry’s right there, all naked and aroused and – shit. Did he really just say – ? Screw steady. Who wants to be steady at a time like this? Louis scrabbles to get his pyjama bottoms the rest of the way off with frantic yet surprisingly dextrous toes and hooks a heel behind Harry’s knee. There’s no way he gets this lucky. There’s no way Harry catches him in red satin pants and _is into it_. There’s no way life is going to let him have that, is there? He decides not to wait to find out, to just try and sneak this one past while life’s not looking, and what his kiss lacks in elegance he thinks he makes up for with sheer, messy enthusiasm. 

Maybe it’s the added friction – or the relief from the friction of being scared shitless all day – but it’s not long before they’re using handfuls of hair to press deep in each other’s mouths, scraping teeth and tongue and sucking on necks in a way that’s probably going to require a crate of Touche Éclat. It’s not that they don’t do this – they’re really, really not supposed to, but they do do this – just sometimes when knee-to-knee contact makes them have to cross their legs and whispering starts to feel as intimate as breathing hot and heavy all over each other. One of them sends up the ‘if you don’t touch me properly I’m going to go totally batshit’ signal and a swift, furtive, not-so-dry hump usually calls a halt to the way they itch for each other from the bed of their nails to the roofs of their mouths. But that’s for tickle-war, accidentally-hugged-too-long, shit-saw-you-wanking-in-the-shower-again hard-ons, not so-apparently-we-both-kink-in-the-same-direction and if-you’re-into-this-I-wonder-what-else and god-I-know-we-said-we-woudn’t-but-do-you-just-want-to-roll-me-over-and-have-your-way-with-me ones.

Harry flings an arm out at the duvet, throwing it back. His hair’s so fluffed it’s practically triangular and there’s a giddy, drunken thing happening in his eyes as he props himself up on his hand that makes Louis – for just a second – think he might have said that last part out loud. Glancing between them to where Louis’s cock is twitching like a proper attention whore, now mostly just wearing the knickers like some sort thin joke shop beard that’s slipped under its chin to rest on his balls, Harry skims his knuckles over his hip and then up the underside of his dick.

Heroically, Louis contains the whimper behind his teeth – but that all goes to hell when Harry traces the elastic pucker at the juncture of his thigh and slips past it to ghost over his bollocks. The noise he makes really has very little dignity in it. He reaches under the pillow for something – anything – to hold onto, and naturally that just makes Harry do it again, this time tag-teaming it with leaning in, pressing him into the mattress, and licking his earlobe into his mouth. A rasp of hot tongue and – 

“Oh god.”

Something about Harry’s devilish grin reminds him of the last time life had the chance to fuck him over and didn’t: when it laid a sea urchin beneath his foot and made him step on the fucker, and yet for reasons of blessed incompetence or something, life didn’t quite follow through and drive a poisonous spike through his dreams. Maybe Harry’s some sort of shield against life’s nefarious plot.

Whatever, he flicks his gaze up like a coquette before making his way down Louis’s rucked-up t-shirt with open-mouthed kisses. Reaching skin, his lips land. Louis jolts at their softness and the maddening tickle of his hair as it brushes in their wake. In the past, they’ve had a strict no-tongue-below-the-bellybutton rule, but Harry’s obviously decided this is special circumstances. 

He licks from the base of Louis’s cock to the tip, meeting his eye as he wraps a hand around and takes it in his mouth. It’s pretty obvious from the slight tremble of his fingers and the furrow of his brow he’s never done this before, that he’s really, really thinking about what he’s doing, no doubt mentally running through some porno for help. But Louis has always thought – and maintains – that there’s really no such thing as a bad blowjob, just a sliding scale from nice-but-wank-me-off-now-or-we’ll-be-here-all-day to magnificent. A flick of tongue across the head and a rush of cold air before he’s back inside – and yes, Harry does have the best mouth ever and apparently he’s a pretty quick learner or he watches way more porn than Louis thought. 

“Jesus – ” Louis scrunches a handful of pillow, losing the other in Harry’s hair, and watches himself slide between his lips, stomach caving in as if he’s missed a step and gone down an entire flight of stairs. “ – wept.”

Harry’s lips tighten as he smiles – or as much as he’s able with a mouthful of cock – his cheeks hollowing as he sucks right on the end. 

The ceiling – usually so steadfast and flat – becomes a wavering horizon, and the slurps and slithers coupled with the feel of Harry’s tongue have him on the brink, even before his fingers curl under the material at Louis’s hip and bunch it up. The drag of satin tight against his balls is one delirium-inspiring thing; that it also makes the leg hole elastic ping over his cheek and get overfamiliar with his crack is a whole new bonus level of _hell yeah_. Breathing like a racehorse that’s just won the Grand National, Louis wonders if Harry has any idea what he’s doing to him, but his only means of communicating with him is to fist his hair and thrust into his mouth.

The fabric hitches higher. Harry, lost in the feel of it around his fingers, tugs harder.

“Holy sh – ” There’s no reason having satin bunched in his arse crack should be a major contributing factor to this being the single most erotic moment of Louis’s life thus far, but god have mercy, it is.

Eyes flashing that way they only do when he realises Louis really likes something, Harry twists the fabric tighter and does it again. 

The rough drag across his arsehole coupled with the tightness of lips on his cock and the pressure on his balls pushes the words, “Fucking hell,” out of Louis’s mouth, and aloud, they sound like a plea. 

Harry releases him and crawls up Louis’s body, settling on top of him hips first with a pointed rock of cock-on-cock – hot and really, really hard when he’s barely been touched. Reaching for his knee, Harry hitches Louis’s leg up around him, fingers scrambling back to their place on his hip. He starts to move, tugging gently but rhythmically on the material, and scratch the other, this – _this_ is the single most erotic moment of his life thus far. 

Mouth stumbling greedily to Harry’s ear, licking the shell, getting mostly hair and not at all caring, Louis struggles to keep on breathing through the ping-pong of sensation. He clings to Harry’s shoulder and a fistful of his mop, leg curling around his thighs, refusing to let go, his whole body tightening so doing anything other than coming seems insurmountable and ludicrous.

Breath rough and damp, Harry nuzzles the spot on his neck that makes his knees list like a drunkard, whispering non-words of encouragement, his tongue a hot flash against his skin. 

Much more familiar territory – they know exactly how to do this – and Louis shifts harder against Harry’s hip with the kind of rhythm that would make even a mediocre drummer weep. A nip of teeth and a final twist at his hip to draw the material over his arse – and fuck, that’s it. The noise he makes as he pulses hot spunk between them – which is never very dignified and he knows it – has an entirely new waver in it, and everything scrunches to try to contain the feeling, from his toes to his arsehole. 

When he can make a thought, it’s: _god, that’s the orgasm I always thought I’d have every single time when I was nine_. A panting, gibbering, sweaty mess, beneath Harry – who looks like the dictionary definition of smug, even as he runs sweet little kisses along his jaw – he hides his face in his forearm and tries to remember how to exist as anything other than kaleidoscope pieces of sensation. 

Weight lifting, a rush of cool air on his exposed stomach, the mattress moves underneath him, followed by the rustle of skin on skin. If none of that told him what’s happening, Harry’s hitched mumbles sneaking in spells it out. He peeks out from under his elbow, because there’s nothing in the world – not flood, not fire, not robot apocalypse – that would keep him from looking when Harry gets on his knees, fingers around his own cock. 

Usually Harry lolls his head back and closes his eyes, shoving the column of his throat out to the world. This time, he’s focused on Louis, biting his lip as he drags a hand up his chest to tug at his t-shirt. “Off.”

Louis nearly faints. He gets it tangled around his head trying to extract himself with limbs too warm and squishy for the task, and throws it into the darkness that falls off the end of Harry’s bed.

Harry gives off a breathy giggle, but his eyes skid, way more predatory than usual, over his body and to the tangle of red satin, dark patches and spent cock. 

Propping himself on one elbow, Louis reaches out. “You want me to – ?” 

Shaking his head, Harry smacks his hand away and pushes him back down onto the pillows, smiling when he lands with a bounce and petulantly rolls his eyes.

Harry’s a really beautiful wanker. The first time Louis saw him at it, he couldn’t stop staring at the flex of the muscles in his arms and the needy parting of his lips – and this time’s no different, except for the part where he’s allowed, and he’s not peeking through the bathroom door and begging the floorboards not to creak and give him away before he’s seen him come. He jerks himself off with no sense of teasing, hips stuttering as he starts to lose it.

Needing to touch him more than they are – a bony nudge of knee on thigh – Louis collects his spare fingers and presses their palms together. He strokes the back of Harry’s hand with his thumb, and it’s ridiculous to think that has anything to do with Harry’s eyelids flickering closed, or that it’s why he comes a moment later, all over Louis’s stomach with a dull, guttural grunt.

The splatter or the look on his face – whichever is less weird – goes straight to Louis’s dick, even though that little man is very much down. He _ouffs_ as Harry collapses, a warm, damp, deadweight all over him. They breathe against each other, his stomach concaving so Harry’s can fit, and every bit of him that counts tingles as if they did something more than get each other off. 

They look at each other with drowsy complicity that says: _so that was all sort of new_ and maybe _er, wow_ and probably _it’s in moments like this people say something stupid, isn’t it?_

Chickening first, Harry kisses the place where Louis’s neck stops being neck and turns into chest, murmuring when Louis collects him into a hug. He’s sure time doesn’t actually cease to have meaning, but that’s how it feels. He could stay here forever – except there’s a prickle of fabric up his arse and it’s apparently trying to bisect him.

Brow puckered under the mess of his fringe, Harry looks up with pupils so big they all but obliterate his iris. “Did you wash any pants for tomorrow?”

“Shit, I forgot. I’m a useless sham of a man.”

Poking at his chin in admonishment, Harry meets his eye again, screwing his mouth to the side as he considers him. “No you’re not,” he says, very seriously, perhaps a shade too possessive, and way, way, way too fond when they’re going to have to get up, wash this off, and go back to snatching what they can of each other when they’re surrounded by people who tell them to not. “You’d look amazing in turquoise – maybe something lacy. We could pick together.”

Louis’s gut says this was a game-changer, that they’re not going to be able to not have this now they know it’s there, but his head knows the game isn’t really theirs to change, hasn’t been since they signed away their rights to be much more than a commodity. It doesn’t break his heart, just nicks the top of it to mark the place where it could tear in two – that is, if he hadn’t known all along that life’s always waiting for its chance to dangle what you want on the end of a string, only to snatch it away when you reach for it, because it’s just a cunt like that.

“I’ve got the mother of all wedgies.”

Harry’s snigger brushes tropical over his chin, blowing everything away, bringing their normality back. And that’s the point, really. While Harry’s laughing, he won’t see it, how very fucked they are, so that’s what Louis will always strive to make him do.

Searching out a kiss – the soft sort that’s going nowhere and saying everything – Louis thinks about stopgaps. This furtive, sneaking thing they steal away to have isn’t what either of them wants, but it does fill the hole, and if it comes with Harry picking out lingerie for him, well, isn’t that just the tiniest and most brilliant kick in life’s nads.


End file.
